It was a strange request that came into the Sbaian embassy one day from Theo, not by him walking into Freyza’s chancellery like he was used to, but rather with a neatly penned missive with a rather simple, yet disturbing request.

I wish to inquire as to any lethal poisons that could be ordered. Preferably neutral tasting.

Lay a vial of precisely two lethal doses in my writing desk at your earliest convenience.

There you will find an apt sum as payment.

Destroy this missive upon receipt. Inability to do so will not be appreciated by the crown.

Theo de S-V

The Sbaians were known to be carrying a myriad of potions, given that their territory was large and fecund, and a massive variety of herbs and medicinal plants could be grown there, which would not be able to survive the frigid winters of Massouron. Besides, they were apolitical when it came to Massouric business. Their embassy thrived on a laissez-faire attitude: both spies of the kingdom and spies against it found respite in the signature Sbaian shrug of washing one’s hands in innocence. So what, if Theo wished two people dead? What sort of businessman would Freyza be not to oblige?

When he received it, he instantly threw it into the fireplace and looked up to Iskander, who was answering letters for him.

‘Get Bayezid,’ he said quickly.

Iskander looked up at once and stood up. ‘Yes, master,’ he said, and excused himself.

The impression of the missive still darted through his mind. Who could it be that Theo — or rather, Louise — wanted dead? Why were it two people, or was a double dose simply to make doubly sure of one person’s demise? His first instinct was the royal couple. A double killing, both Henri and Katherine dead, leaving no bitter half of the union to avenge the murders. He gulped. Perhaps Katherine had made a terrible mistake to return, after all…

‘You were looking for me,’ said Bayezid when he entered.

‘When am I not?’ asked Freyza, trying to appear sunnier than he felt. He clicked his tongue. ‘Say, Bayezid, have you picked up any animosity as of late? I feel like I’ve been stuck within the walls of my own mind ever since Queen Katherine left, and thereafter, still…’

Bayezid flared his eyes. ‘Is that so?’ he asked. ‘That’s right, I totally forgot about Queen Katherine. How has that been faring for you?’

From Freyza’s suddenly soured expression, Bayezid already understood what he was to say. Bayezid knew Freyza a long time, and he happened to be wholly predictable. ‘Forget what I told you about Queen Katherine,’ he said, trying to keep his face steady.

‘Ah, that’s rough,’ Bayezid said.

‘No no,’ he said as he always did, ‘Nothing bad. Just a… slightly uncomfortable encounter. Nothing to worry about. I’ll fill you in, in due time. But my question still stands. Animosity.’

‘Animosity?’ he echoed. ‘Well, it appears not. Not after those servants were noosed up.’

‘Right…’ said Freyza. ‘And you’ve been paying attention?’

Bayezid sat back in the chair opposite Freyza and looked at him with questioning eyes. ‘Was I supposed to? If I’m supposed to, I’ll do a better job next time.’

Freyza briefly closed his eyes and exhaled. ‘Bayezid,’ he began, stating his subordinate’s name with a tone so sharp Bayezid nearly felt the cut of it against his throat, ‘A demand has been made of me that can take a number of people out. People I care for, people I deal with, perhaps even myself. Perhaps even yourself. I am too occupied to be my own eyes and ears to the degree that I need to be. While you are out watching Louise’s ladies-in-waiting bathe in the moat and frolic, while you are out stalking Rima—’

‘I had dealings with Rima, you know—’

‘Shut your mouth,’ Freyza snapped. ‘While you were an idle man, I’ve run this embassy as if I’ve twice as many hours in a day as I do. And now I’m risking my death because Master Bayezid of Amouas knows the favourite flower of every woman at court, but not whether there’s a conspiracy against our nearest associates? Be very ashamed of yourself.’

‘That’s not true,’ Bayezid protested. ‘I’ve kept myself out of Queen Katherine’s business, for one. I know she was your project.’

‘One day, I wish to tell your wife all about you,’ Freyza said, ‘But meanwhile, I fear that if I tell the truth, she will behead me also. That just leaves one person to be the cruel voice of reason for you, Bayezid, and that would be myself. Queen Katherine is not my project, never was, sure isn’t now. Perhaps instead of staying out of her business, you should have paid a little more attention to it. That spymaster of hers would gladly scalp you and wear your gorgeous auburn mane as a winter hat.’

Demonstratively, Bayezid ran a hand through his shoulder-length hair. ‘It wouldn’t suit him.’

‘Very funny,’ said Freyza. ‘I’m asking you to help me, or I’ll make like the sultan, and kick you out on your arse. You and Falcona both. Perhaps confined to your other half, you’ll finally realise that she exists.’

Bayezid stood up. ‘Sorry,’ he said.

‘Sorry doesn’t buy much,’ Freyza refuted immediately.

‘I know…’ Bayezid answered with a sigh. ‘I’ll see what I can do now. And the next thing I’ll say — please leave it if it doesn’t apply. If you’ve had your heart shredded recently, which I have felt comfortable assuming by the tone of your voice and the fact you’ve been close to tears this whole time, seek out someone else that you are certain you won’t care about. It’s like the hair of the dog that bit you, except it’s the tits of a bitch that didn’t bite you.’

Freyza sighed. ‘You should probably go now.’

He watched Bayezid leave with a long, disapproving look that did not fade once the door shut. Bayezid was, although his closest friend, an utterly useless associate to him. Even Rima, his secretary who had been captured in the Najan Isles by Freyza’s very own ship, had more sense in her head than this overeducated and underexperienced diplomat.

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On the other hand, Bayezid knew him better than anyone else did.

The world had felt complete for a fortnight after he had left Bourrac, though his feelings had been conjured up out of nowhere. Had Katherine never returned, he would have likely gone to the grave believing that she was the one. How foolish he thought himself to be now, now it was him who had broken it off. Perhaps these drives could be conjured up again, and with an open visor of all options, a less intimidating conquest could be chosen.

He smirked. A certain power had distilled within his mind: somehow, he would drag himself out of this trench of his own digging.

----------------------------------------

Ever since Katherine arrived, much of the youthful crowd that had fled to Argento upon her departure returned with chests full of new games, unknown textiles, and spirits the likes of which were wholly unavailable in Massouron or Ilworth.

It had steeped Henri’s camarilla in drunken afternoons down in the dungeons, where the partying resumed after a short pause due to Isabella’s short stay in Souchon.

Henri and Katherine were late to one of these afternoon gatherings due to the need of their presence elsewhere in the region. They gathered in one of Henri’s chambers to dress for the occasion.

Henri straddled a cork with his teeth as he eyed his fiancée, one leg ankle-deep in a pink silk stocking.

‘I spoke with your mother a few weeks ago,’ Katherine said seemingly out of nowhere as a maid laced her into her kirtle. ‘Did she ever mention it?’

‘No,’ he spoke through the obstacle in his teeth. ‘Why?’

‘She accused me of theatrics,’ Katherine began shyly. ‘I was wondering if she’d trickled it down to you yet. I’m disinterested in spending time by your side and being cast away soon.’

‘She has no power,’ said Henri.

Katherine reluctantly smiled. She knew Henri was fully unaware of the power that his mother wielded. In Katherine’s eyes, Louise was truly a wicked woman, one who wielded her grey eminence like an axe, ready to dish out justice on terms that were fully disturbing.

‘I’m not sure,’ said Katherine.

Henri chuckled. ‘My darling… nobody can hurt you as long as my sun shines on you.’

‘And it will continue to do so?’ she wondered.

Henri looked her up and down. ‘I asked for you to return, did I not? That should be all the confirmation you need. Let’s go, they’ll get started without us.’

Katherine slipped into her mules and looked up at him with the worry that her issues were being underestimated — a potentially fatal reaction in slow-time. She had a pit in her stomach that accompanied the knowledge that there was no choice but to oblige Henri and leave the safe alcove of his chamber for the hallways and the dungeon.

Ever since she had returned, Henri had adopted the strange habit of hooking his arm through the crook of Katherine’s when they walked down the hallway together, more as a measure of camaraderie than romance.

‘Much has changed since you left,’ he said absentmindedly. ‘You knew Fairfax left, right?’

Katherine nodded.

‘He was at the coast undergoing some herbal remedies and he returned wearing this… cone over his privates,’ Henri continued.

‘What?’ Katherine chuckled.

‘Really. A cone full of sage and lavender. You needn’t laugh when you see particularly fashionable young men imitate it. Some say it’ll be quite in vogue. In fact, though I ridiculed it as he came in, sprigs of lavender sticking out as if it was his pubic hair, it’s growing on me. I am starting to see breeches without these… codpieces, is the only way I can describe them politely… as somewhat incomplete and sexless.’

Katherine laughed and shook her head. ‘None of this would have happened in Norbury Castle, you know?’ she asked. ‘Here instead of being asked to insert his junk into a lavender-filled cone by the coast, our best doctors would have just hacked it off.’

Henri chuckled as well and sighed happily. ‘I missed you,’ he said. ‘You’re, like, me but as a girl. And from some backwards fucking island.’

He was hardly a poet, and Katherine found herself charmed despite his incoherent ways. ‘I’m not from a backwards island, I am a mythical queen from the foreign land of Ilworth, Henri. Here to show you our ways of drinking and whoring and stepping on Massouric faces, as we have done for hundreds of years. Sorry to say, but demeaning Chavanets is kind of in my blood.’

‘Your people would castrate Fairfax due to your own incompetence but you still feel comfortable counting Massouron as Ilworthian province. Classy broad, you are.’

She looked at him slyly. ‘Of course I am. I’m you in the shape of a woman, like you said.’

They began their descent down into the dungeons, and Henri walked half a step before Katherine in order to hold her hand as they walked down. With each step, the air got warmer and more oppressive, and the sound of lute music and laughter became more and more potent.

‘They did start without us,’ Henri said.

Katherine clicked her tongue. ‘We should’ve started without them.’

As they reached the lowest level and made their way through the silks, some of which had tattered in the year that Henri had ruled, they noticed most of the women gathering around Diane, whose brown hair fell down her body, obscuring it, and who wore nothing besides her hair and a full set of diamonds that dangled from her ears, neck, fingers and speckled upon hairpins in her hair.

It pained Katherine how Henri looked at Diane, though it had not changed in the years that they had known each other. Whereas Katherine felt certain that of his real prospects, she was the favourite, and not just that, even without her lineage, circumstance could have made her his mistress, his pull towards Diane was inevitable. Her features were as feline and sharp as they were angelic, with upturned blue eyes that danced with grey and green, and a stunning gold centre, a narrow straight nose, and shapely, narrow lips upon an iridescent complexion. Besides her perfect face, her body was taut and girlish, with long lanky limbs, despite being half a decade Henri’s senior. She would be twenty-eight in the summer, to Henri’s twenty-three and Katherine’s twenty-four. If not his most favoured mistress, ancient to in boyish eyes.

She bloomed with the king’s attention, and only when she cast a sly gaze upon her competitor, did Katherine begin to pay attention to her words, which had been spouting out of her since before the royal pair arrived.

‘Henri, Kathy,’ she said. ‘I was telling the ladies about my new lover.’

Nobody but Henri called Katherine Kathy. She scoffed quietly.

‘Were you now?’ asked Henri. ‘What’s a new lover to a Souchon Palace native such as yourself? I imagine that in your time, you’ve screwed everyone that you might have fancied.’

Her large liquid eyes looked up with mischief. ‘Well, there’s new folks every day. And it’s not every day that we receive a rogueish tall gentleman from a faraway land who gives me diamonds and desert glass to boot. I’ve been wooed for months now before anything happened. I was just telling everyone about the diamonds. Aren’t they gorgeous? Supposed to be worn with nought but a smile.’

Henri raised his brows as he kicked his shoes off and unfurled the bow on his ruff that attached it to his shirt. ‘I’m not a jealous man, but you shouldn’t push me,’ he said.

‘I only began to see him as such just before Isabella arrived. I thought he’d be a dull nightmare, but quite the contrary,’ Diane said and briefly paused. ‘If he were, that would’ve been a shame of him. I consider him quite gifted in some ways.’

Katherine chuckled. ‘Bayezid of Amouas?’ she wondered. ‘I hear that he fucks anything that moves. Lovely diamonds, though, Diane. Really.’

She pursed her lips. ‘No,’ she mused carelessly. ‘Freyza of Tougaf.’

Katherine’s heart dropped. She was unsure why it bothered her so to see her rival dripping in Sbaian diamonds, hopefully unaware of Katherine’s very own history with the ambassador, though part of her felt relief that he had likely moved on from the affair as well. However, a side of her remained filled with a great anger and jealousy; after all, it had been Freyza’s will to reject her.

‘Ah,’ said Katherine. ‘I believe I may have dealt with him.’

‘Have you?’ she asked.

Katherine bit her tongue. More than anything, she wished to tell the story from start to finish. She had been there first. Diane had no honour — it was a shame that Katherine had received no diamonds to prove it.

‘You’d be surprised,’ said Diane. ‘I’ve been told his duchy, Tougaf, is actually larger than some of our neighbouring countries. It’s larger than Ilworth, for example. No wonder the gold keeps flowing.’

She frowned. There was no way that Diane had gotten close enough to Freyza to wear his diamonds, and not learned of his trysts with Katherine. Was this an outright attack?

‘Well…’ Katherine began. ‘I’ve been told he gets rather attached, so if you wish to stay at your post as royal mistress, you should thank him kindly for the diamonds and move along.’

Diane looked Katherine up and down, and swiftly moved to Henri. ‘I don’t know…’ she cooed. ‘I feel like even our king can learn a thing or two from the Duke of Tougaf.’